


Warm Rain

by motsureru



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Oneshot, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-17
Updated: 2008-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:19:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motsureru/pseuds/motsureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a fic written for  <a href="http://be-found.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://be-found.livejournal.com/"><strong>be_found</strong></a> in exchange for a layout she's working on for me. It explores the idea of Gabriel Gray meeting Mohinder before Chandra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warm Rain

**Teaser:** _Amidst a world where time surrounded him that was all his own, Gabriel thought himself not happy, but relatively satisfied._ _But in a single second, his mildly satisfactory world had changed.  
_ __

  
 

Warm Rain

 

There was comfort in pattern. There was comfort in schedule. There was comfort in structure. Like hands over seconds, hands over minutes, and hands over hours, there was a progression to his everyday life that Gabriel enjoyed. He liked to wake up at sunrise, shower and dress, take his cup of tea over the red rays of a morning sun, and read his paper before it was time to open shop.

Gabriel took pleasure in the subtle sound of clocks ticking in unison all around him when he sat at his work desk. The quiet thrum of their eternal perfection wrapped around him like a warm blanket and made him feel at home in his own little world, his little area of the universe in which no chaos dared thrive. Everything had a place and everything fulfilled a function. He was master here.

Amidst a world where time surrounded him that was all his own, Gabriel thought himself not happy, but relatively satisfied. He could have been more, his mother’s nagging voice reminded, lingering in the recesses of his mind, but Gabriel curbed those thoughts as often as he could. To be more was to be happy, but to be Gabriel Gray was to be satisfied. To be contented. Or at least to be in control.

But in a single second, his mildly satisfactory world had changed.

“Gabriel Gray?”

It had started with a name.

‘Gabriel Gray’ had never sounded so enticing as it fell from another’s lips before. Gabriel was sure that no man or woman had ever said his name as though he was exactly what they had been looking for all their lives. But Mohinder Suresh said it with a curiosity and a smile that made Gabriel’s clocks tick a second too fast.

He took in the sight of a man who had been born to flatter with that smile. With ebony locks that curled just barely about his face, with dark eyes that glimmered in innocent beauty, and a hopeful stance that was both imploring and inviting, this man must have been created to charm. Gabriel took to him immediately, but took to him with a silent, flabbergasted stare.

“…Mr. Gray?” came a second inquiry, dark brows furrowing against pale sienna skin.

“A-…Yes?” Gabriel cleared his throat and scooted back his chair, standing. The man between Gabriel’s display cases held out his hand in greeting.

“My name is Doctor Mohinder Suresh. I’ve come to see you about something very important.” His smile punctuated their handshake, and Gabriel couldn’t help but smile back.

 

 

“You know, you surprise me,” Mohinder was saying over his cup of coffee. Gabriel gazed beyond thick glasses, his fingers absently dipping a tea bag into his own cup from across the table. “I was sure that the first person who I approached about my father’s theories would turn me down flat. Would think I must be absolutely crazy.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy at all,” Gabriel replied with a slight smile, one that faded with a touch of nervousness. “The things you’re telling me… they sound fascinating. A little unbelievable, I’ll admit, but still fascinating. I can’t wait to read his book.” 

Gabriel couldn’t say what it was, exactly, that made his desire to speak with this man so strong. Mohinder was right: Gabriel should have thought him insane, and there was no logical reason for Gabriel to decide so quickly that he should believe Mohinder’s words, much less be sitting down to coffee with him. But there was something, an undeniable gravity, that drew Gabriel from his safe little box and into the whirlpool of Mohinder’s words. Gabriel had longed to belong, before, but never enough to _try_ to belong. After all, had he not stayed in his shop? Worn his collared shirts and old-fashioned sweater vests? Made friends with Time and not its keepers?

“So you’ll let me do the tests then? They’re completely non-invasive.” Mohinder held his hands up, palms facing Gabriel, and waved them a little, as if to push the very idea out of the watchmaker’s head. “I mean, I know it sounds bizarre, this stranger, wanting to do tests on you, telling you that you have some sort of an ability…”

“I don’t,” Gabriel interrupted with a tiny smile. “I mean… I don’t think I do. I’d _like_ to have one. To be different. Special. But I’m pretty sure I’m just going to disappoint you, Dr. Suresh.”

“Mohinder,” he corrected with a broad smile.

Gabriel felt his face color the softest tone of pink. “Mohinder… I… I’m afraid I don’t think you’ll find anything, but I want to help. Even if it may disprove what you’d like to find evidence for.” Gabriel looked downward, at his hands grasping the cup, and was struck by how white they seemed. Bleak, bloodless; even grasping a hot cup of tea they seemed chilled by his quiet uncertainty, his subtle despair. The sight tainted the warmth of Mohinder’s words.

Mohinder leaned back in his chair a little, still smiling. “Well, at the very least, you’ll have made a friend, right? Though I’m sure you have plenty of friends, living here all your life. But I’ve come to think more and more that New York can be a frightening place when you don’t know anyone. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but…”

“I don’t care for the people,” Gabriel replied with a tiny shake of his head. He let his eyes travel back up, over Mohinder’s youthful face, his welcoming demeanor, and Gabriel felt as though for once in all his life he’d met a meaningful person. He wanted to know more. “I’ve never found anyone worthwhile to talk to by being a watchmaker.”

Mohinder smiled a smile that reached his eyes, and gave a little tilt of his head.

“Until now, I hope.”

 

 

The testing began on a Tuesday not long thereafter and continued every other day of the week. Mohinder tried his best to be punctual, but it was an endeavor that often failed. At first Gabriel found himself mildly irritated that Mohinder showed up at 10:31 A.M. some mornings and 11:47 A.M others, variations on those times gaining or losing ten minutes. But the irritation lasted no longer than those minutes, at most, and whenever Mohinder happened to burst in the door and give his breathless, sheepish ‘I know, I’m late!’ laugh, Gabriel could not help but let all the tension from his shoulders melt away and welcome every minute regained by Mohinder’s company.

There was a strange security that Gabriel felt in Mohinder’s presence. They barely knew one another, but Mohinder seemed eager to reach out and connect with a person in this foreign place, and Gabriel found it unexpectedly welcome. Mohinder had entered his little world, bringing with him the chaos of his dreams and aspirations, and yet Gabriel didn’t mind in the slightest. It came to be that by the fifth or sixth meeting, Gabriel forgot to care what time it was Mohinder came at all, only that he arrived and wore a smile. Gabriel loved to watch the man smile.

After a week and a half, however, those smiles began to wane, and Gabriel began to worry about the expressions on Mohinder’s face. 

“You’re not finding anything,” he commented, watching how Mohinder tossed down a stack of read-outs from the machine hooked up around Gabriel’s head. A few of the papers slipped off of Gabriel’s work desk, where the device was set up, and floated on an invisible wind to opposite sides of the floor.

“I’m not, I-”

“I’m sorry. I know you must be angry. I told you that I-”

“I’m not angry,” Mohinder countered, giving Gabriel a tired smile. Mohinder ran a hand through his tousled, dark curls and sighed, sitting down on the stool across from Gabriel. “I’m not angry,” he repeated, softer. “I’m just… frustrated, obviously. We’ve been doing these tests so many times over, so many different ways…”

Gabriel frowned to himself, turning his eyes to the floor and pulling the wires and round stickers from his temples. “I’m sorry, Mohinder. You’ve been working so hard,” he shook his head, taking off his thick glasses and tossing them onto the counter. “Maybe if I did something different, if I-”

“You know, it’s not you, I just…” Mohinder took a deep breath, leaning a forearm against the desk beside them and gazing off a bit distantly at the lamp that sat nearby. He was momentarily silent. There was a small, nostalgic sort of smile on his lips, but it seemed strangely sad. “All I ever wanted to be was something more than my father’s shadow… and yet, here I am… Is _being_ him really any better, I wonder?” Mohinder shook his head and looked back down. “I’m not even _succeeding_ at that.”

Gabriel found his heart leaping at Mohinder’s words, even as he sympathized with the look of disappointment in his eyes. He found himself wanting words, eloquent ones, that could tell Mohinder he understood. That could communicate to him the empathy, the compassion that Gabriel felt for him. But the only words he found were: “I… know exactly what you mean,” and surprisingly, they were enough.

In a rush of boldness, an unexpected urge caught Gabriel, and he reached out and rested his large, callused hand over Mohinder’s smaller one. Mohinder’s skin was warm and soft, fingers thin and taut from what Gabriel imagined was years of typing over a keyboard. When Gabriel’s hand covered Mohinder’s, the darker man looked up, a puzzled gaze upon the watchmaker.

Gabriel swallowed, expression serious, but somehow gentle and pleading. “Don’t give up on me, Mohinder. Please. Not yet.” He wanted to hold that hand, to feel it under his own, forever. The desire was inexplicable, innate.

The insistence in Gabriel’s voice could have been interpreted as pathetic, needy, but all Mohinder saw in it was the longing of a man so much like himself. And Mohinder smiled, turning his hand over and letting his fingertips brush delicately over the flesh of Gabriel’s palm. 

“I haven’t. And I won’t.”

 

 

The days that passed became weeks, and it seemed that every new week brought with it less concern for the one before. The results of the tests were consistently negative. Gabriel should have felt disappointed, perhaps, but he never dwelled on each week’s failures. Somehow Gabriel knew that he wasn’t hoping very strongly to be successful, either. As time went on, he was looking forward more to seeing the bright and smiling doctor than he was discovering some ‘ability’ Mohinder’s father had theorized about. In a guilty moment, Gabriel had thanked the mild stroke that had prevented Chandra Suresh’s travel. How else could he have come to know this incredible man?

Meetings at the store and meetings at coffee houses had turned into lunches and occasionally dinners. Gabriel couldn’t help but spend those afternoons and evenings drinking in whatever Mohinder had to say. Gabriel himself had never spoken so much in his life, only stumbling over his words when Mohinder touched a lingering hand to his shoulder or his wrist, gaze subtly suggestive. An uneasy but excited feeling fluttered in Gabriel’s chest in those moments, and he couldn’t help but wonder, childishly, if Mohinder meant more by those tiny intimacies.

For Gabriel, who had scarcely touched a human being other than his mother in years, the thrill was with a life of its own. It was not that he disliked being touched, being recognized as unique and desirable to another person, but simply that no one he had met in passing in his life in the city ever seemed to understand Gabriel, to want to understand him, and therefore he had never ventured to imagine he might somehow connect with them as he dreamed he was connecting with Mohinder.

Even as he walked down a street in the dusk of the day, Mohinder at his side, Gabriel mused on how special this man could make him feel, simply by saying his name and acknowledging how they were mentally engaged in this personal discourse with one another. Emotions, Gabriel hoped, would follow naturally in suit.

“Are you listening, Gabriel?” Mohinder asked, glancing over at him as they strolled.

Gabriel nodded, his hands in his pockets while Mohinder’s were waving around with his excited words.

“Well, I was saying, his lecture was absolutely fascinating! I wish you could have been there. His ideas about synapses were a little off, I thought, but the original concepts of transhemispheric connections in the brain were fabulous.” Mohinder continued to rattle on, and Gabriel couldn’t help but smile to himself, satisfied by the enthusiastic chatter.

Suddenly, it started to rain. Gabriel looked up in time to catch a drop on the lens of his thick glasses, and it traveled down the frame to his temple. He noticed the rain was still sparse, pit-pattering here and there, but it was warm. A drop hit his face, on his cheek, and that one was warm too. Not paying much attention to the world around him, Gabriel glanced down again, and his eyes met the sight of a car coming sooner than he expected.

Mohinder already had one foot forward and was two steps ahead of Gabriel, still prattling away about the lecture. “Mohinder!” Gabriel felt his chest constrict, and just as the car’s horn sounded louder than Mohinder’s words, Gabriel snatched the man by the arm, yanking him backwards with a sharp jerk. A startled gasp came from Mohinder’s lips, and he lost his footing, stepping backwards and tripping over the curb into Gabriel’s cautious arms.

The car whizzed by, taking the turn sharply and honking obnoxiously several more times as it skidded on its way. Mohinder was grasping tightly onto Gabriel’s shoulder, half turned toward the man. He breathed heavily, shocked by the near-death experience, and watched as the car peeled down the street at top speed.

“Are you alright?” Gabriel asked, eyes intent on Mohinder’s distant ones. His face was serious, his own heart pounding a mile a minute. He eased his grip on Mohinder’s arm, searching his shaken face. “You nearly…. stepped out in front of that car,” he breathed uneasily, stating the obvious dumbly in his own surprise.

Mohinder turned his gaze to Gabriel, eyes still slightly wide. “Gabriel… you saved my life…” his lips changed from an expression of disbelief into a quirk of a smile at one corner, and he stared up at the pale man in a kind of awe.

A nervous smile passed through Gabriel, and he loosened his hold on Mohinder, letting his hands fall away. But just as he did, Mohinder’s hands came up. The darker man grabbed Gabriel by the front of his light jacket and pulled him down, clumsily covering Gabriel’s lips with his own.

The kiss wasn’t quite as Gabriel had envisioned it; it was a little inexperienced, a little sloppy, a little sudden, but no part of that made it any less sweet or made Gabriel’s heart beat any less quickly. A prickly heat stole into Gabriel’s cheeks, and the race of his heart was suddenly so fast it was painful. Mohinder’s lips were soft, and Gabriel imagined he could hear the thud of his heart move excruciatingly faster when they kissed again. Then his heart slowed, and all Gabriel felt was Mohinder.

 

 

Dinners were different from then on, and the first time one happened in his apartment, Gabriel reflected quietly on how happy it made him to set up a little candlelit table in his kitchen and invite Mohinder into his humble world. He had been shy about his home at first, since no one had ever seen it before, and he avoided discussion of his abode as much as he could.

Dinner was a simple meal, one Gabriel had cooked for two, and conversation had been subdued and calm. Afterwards, when dinner was over and they relaxed casually on the sofa with two crystal glasses and a bottle of red wine, Gabriel felt that these weeks could never have gone better, and could never have gone any other way.

“You look different tonight,” Mohinder said, a comfortable smile on his lips. He looked graceful, beautiful, elegant, even, in the light of the few candles Gabriel had arranged around the room. The wine in Mohinder’s hand complemented the color of his skin, and the aesthetics were not lost on Gabriel.

“Do I?” the man asked in return, taking a small sip from his glass. He had foregone glasses, for a bit, and there was no need for a sweater inside his apartment. Gabriel had on a collared shirt of a pure white, and looked just like any other man.

Mohinder tilted his head a little, observing Gabriel. “I think…. maybe it’s because you’re thinking about something. You’ve got something on your mind,” he suggested.

Gabriel shook his head in gentle denial. “No… not especially. I just… I’m happy,” he admitted, letting his eyes trail away towards the rug. “I mean, I never expected you would stick around… after you discovered I didn’t have an ability. After you found out I was normal.”

This time, Mohinder was the one to shake his head. “There are a million reasons for me to stay. All of those reasons have to do with you, no matter what you do or don’t have.”

A short, breathless laugh came from Gabriel’s lips. “Me? Of all the reasons… that’s why I thought you’d leave. I’m ordinary, boring… just look at me. No one would say hello to me in line for a bus, let alone get to know me in my shop. I’m-”

“Different,” Mohinder injected. “I like different.” Mohinder sat up a little straighter and set down his glass on the table beside them. “There are things about you, Gabriel… you’re not ordinary at all. It’s like you…” Mohinder pursed his lips for a moment, trying to think about his words. “It’s like you live outside time. In this little world of yours. Time doesn’t touch you. You’re able to live your life at whatever pace you want, according to no one’s clock but your own and I… I admire that. I think time is my greatest enemy. And here you’ve tamed it. You’re incredible.”

“Time…” Gabriel mused, looking down a little. “Time _is_ the greatest enemy, isn’t it…?”

Suddenly, Mohinder had moved forward as though to kiss him, and he was leaning over Gabriel a little before he had even realized the man was near. The action startled Gabriel, and gave a little jerk, backing up. The wine glass in his hand was knocked, and the red liquid splashed haphazardly over his chest. Gabriel jumped a little, expecting it to be cold, but it was just the opposite: hot, strikingly so. He watched as the thin, translucent color spread slowly over his white shirt, darkening and thickening until Gabriel was staring at a thick, scarlet red. Eyes widening, Gabriel looked up to Mohinder as he felt a subtle pain begin to radiate over his chest.

“Mohinder?”

“ **Sylar!** ”

The lights were flashing and there was a piercing sound, a loud wail, a whining pitch that rose and fell in ear-rattling tones. The alarm pulsed, stabbing at his ear drums, but above it all Sylar heard his name, and when he opened his bleary eyes there was Mohinder’s face still, hovering above him.

Why did he look so distraught, he wondered?

“Sylar, hold on!”

Mohinder pressed his hand down firmly against Sylar’s chest, pinning the man down against the floor with his palm. There was red, a brilliant crimson seeping up between Mohinder’s fingers and across Sylar’s shirt, staining the clean white with pain. The blood continued to pour, and Mohinder clung ever more desperately to keep the wound closed.

“Sylar? Sylar, are you with me? Talk to me!”

“Suresh, let it go,” someone was saying from behind him. “The Company wanted him alive, but he killed our guys. Let him suffer.” The tone was spiteful, but the one Mohinder spit back was far more vehement.

“OUT! GET OUT!” His heated words tore through the air. Mohinder’s whole body shook, the lab coat on his shoulders trembling, his Company ID waving slowly back and forth with his uncertain movements. “Sylar!”

_Softer. Talk softer. Be still._ Sylar took in a shaking breath, and it caught. Mohinder was slipping his free hand delicately behind his neck, and Sylar watched him, lifting a hand to his face. It looked as though those were tears in Mohinder’s eyes. Sylar reached up to touch them, curious, and his own eyes widened to see how horribly pale his hands appeared. They were white, so white, and before he could touch Mohinder’s face, one of those droplets fell and hit Sylar’s cheek.

“ _It’s warm… warm rain…_ ” Sylar whispered, breath catching again, stuttering in its shallow gasps. Mohinder seemed to bow over him, closer, and Sylar smiled, smiled even though Mohinder looked so very sad. There was no reason to be sad, just look how close they were.

Mohinder’s fingers tightened on Sylar’s chest, shaking, and Sylar felt his heart begin to speed up, being to pump inexplicably faster. Desperation, a last, futile desperation worked through his body, and Sylar felt keenly how his heart beat so horribly fast that it hurt. It beat right through the pain, and he was beginning to feel dizzy.

_What a first kiss feels like…_

“Sylar, not yet… Sylar just hold on,” Mohinder murmured, eyes glassed over and squinting against tears. “Sylar…”

_Gabriel…_

The wine was spreading faster, through his shirt and over Mohinder’s fingers. What a mess, on their beautiful date. But it was alright, Mohinder was leaning so close, and he was so happy that he was moved to tears. Mohinder was so gorgeous, and he loved Gabriel so much he was going to kiss him anyway, even though he had spilled the wine like such an amateur.

“ _Sylar…_ ”

In an instant his life was supposed to flash before his eyes – the moments of sweetness, of happiness, the ones with the greatest meaning. Everything that made him smile in his life was meant to cross his mind one last time, so that he could carry it within himself for an eternity. 

But…

“ _This… is perfect. Just how I always saw it…_ ”

All Sylar saw was the could haves, the would haves, the might haves, the should haves… all the hopes that had lingered in long forgotten, long ignored caverns of his mind. The secret yearnings known only unto himself stretched out forever, incorruptible, before the eyes of a Gabriel Gray that had never seen Mohinder smile in true tenderness, nor whisper reassurances with all the intentions of a lover. With those images flickering, an unbeknownst lie, before Sylar’s eyes, his heart slowed to a stop. His eyes stared vacantly. His lips smiled.

And Mohinder was never quite sure why he cried.


End file.
